FOR AS LONG as there has been a Saddam Hussein, Saddam scholars have been confronted by a question with no easy answer: just what kind of crazy is he? He reigns by terror at home, while preying on anti-American sentiment among the conflict-averse abroad. So is Saddam calculated-crazy, crazy like the cross-dressing, discharge-seeking Klinger character in "M*A*S*H," crazy like a fox?

Or is he certifiable, driving-with-one's-lights-on-dim, two-pence-short-of-a-bob crazy? Some say he evidences that special brand of tin-pot dictator crazy--the kind of crazy that caused the syphilitic Idi Amin to eat his victims' organs and store their heads in the fridge. While others (mostly axe-grinding Iraqi dissidents) have suggested it may go beyond that, that Saddam might be suffering from the most advanced, most debilitating, most incurable brand of barminess--that he just might be Angelina Jolie-crazy. [...]

But there is perhaps no portrait of Saddam Hussein that has more effectively explored the non compos mentis angle than "Uncle Saddam," a documentary by French filmmaker Joel Soler, which Cinemax will air on November 26 at 7:00 p.m. Soler ingratiated himself to Saddam's inner circle (including his personal filmmaker, his architect, and his interior decorator) by convincing them he intended to document the country's suffering under U.N. sanctions. The anti-American pose served as a credible cover since Soler is, after all, French.

But unlike many of his sophisticated countrymen, Soler, a former television producer, is prone to moral outrage, and has displayed an admirable streak of ballsy-ness. Hot on the bin Laden trail during another project, Soler was beaten by bin Laden bodyguards after refusing to relinquish his camera. On September 11, he had been working on a project on Adolf Hitler, and found himself watching the Twin Towers collapse in Leni Riefenstahl's living room (she watched alongside him--in her bathrobe). [...]